Cricket’s new boys cast off shadow of war but World T20 hosts are struggling
to qualify for own competition

The balloons are ready, the vol-au-vents are warming but on Sunday there is a good chance that the Bangladesh cricket team will end up like the thoroughly miserable teenage girl in the old Lesley Gore song, forced to look on as Judy and Johnny get it together at her own party.

Bangladesh are the hosts for the fifth World Twenty20, which starts in four days. It is a watershed moment for them: it may be their fourth time hosting an International Cricket Council event, after co-hosting the 2011 World Cup, the 2004 Under-19 World Cup and the 1998 ICC KnockOut, but this is the first major tournament that they have taken on alone. Here is their big chance, their opportunity to compost all the goodwill that has been thrown their way since they won Test status in 2000, to capitalise on the genuine enthusiasm for the sport that exists on the ground.

But there are problems. Already there have been serious worries about security – violence surrounded the general election in January and a bomb exploded outside the hotel of the West Indies Under-19 team in December – and fears about the readiness of a couple of the stadiums. Now, in the wake of defeat by Afghanistan in the Asia Cup, there seems a fair chance that Bangladesh will not even qualify for their own competition.

The tournament has been split into two stages – a qualifying leg, which involves eight countries (six associate nations, plus Zimbabwe and Bangladesh) split into two groups; and the Super 10s, where the top two from the qualifying group join the eight top nations in the tournament proper. The problem for Bangladesh is that in their qualifying group alongside Nepal and Hong Kong are Afghanistan, the cricket world’s new heart-throbs and hair-flicking romantic leads.

If Bangladesh used to be the dreamy favourites of the unaligned, now it is Afghanistan. From the most unlikely of circumstances, civil war, invasion, and chaos, dusty shalwar kameezes on a gritty strip in a soul-destroying refugee camp in Pakistan, Afghanistan have somehow created something wonderful, a team able to compete at an associate level. The rate of progress has been more than astonishing – from first attaining associate ICC status in 2001 they are now rated 12th in the ICC one-day rankings, just behind Ireland and the Test nations.

There is a cricket academy in Kabul, their new coach is the ex-Queensland and South Australian player and Papua New Guinea coach Peter Anderson. They have kit and a sponsor and millions of fans. They have goodwill and promises of help from Pakistan and Sri Lanka. A wonderful film, Out of the Ashes (2010), documented their fairy-tale progress.

In October Afghanistan managed won a place in the 2015 World Cup, the first time they have qualified, by finishing second in the ICC’s World Cricket League Championship. The streets from the airport were lined with ecstatic, bouncing crowds when they arrived home.

In December they took Pakistan to the final ball of a Twenty20 game in Sharjah and then in February they beat Australia in the Under-19 World Cup in Abu Dhabi. And this month, in their first appearance in the Asia Cup, and in only their fourth game against a Test-playing nation, they beat Bangladesh, by 32 runs at Fatullah, So far, so shiny handbag and patent shoes. And all the

while Bangladesh have looked increasingly dowdy. The team who beat Pakistan in the 1999 World Cup have stalled and the ICC is known to be deeply unimpressed by the rate of progress.

None of the major Test nations outside Asia are showing any great desire to play them. The Bangladesh Premier League (BPL), their domestic Twenty20 competition, has been beset by allegations of corruption. And the boy wonder, the fairy-tale, the youngest man ever to make a Test century, and the former Bangladesh captain, Mohammad Ashraful, has pleaded guilty to match-fixing and spot-fixing in the BPL.

Just as the songwriter would have it, the first match of the Twenty20 World Cup pits Bangladesh against Afghanistan at Dhaka.

Bangladesh have home advantage and relative experience; the Afghans the luck of the new and that magical feeling of being part of a living breathing fairy tale – a fairy tale that once belonged to Bangladesh.

What a great refreshing kick in the bottom for cricket if in 10 years’ time both these sides were flourishing. But for now, if they lose on Sunday, no one should begrudge Bangladesh a good cry at their own party, however magical the opposition.